![Google Ngrams chart showing the changing Romanization of Arabic vowels](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Google_Ngrams_chart_showing_the_changing_Romanization_of_Arabic_vowels.jpg)
The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of
written
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
and
spoken Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
in the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
. Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles,
cataloging
In library and information science, cataloging ( US) or cataloguing ( UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as auth ...
Arabic language works,
language education
Language education – the process and practice of teaching a second or foreign language – is primarily a branch of applied linguistics, but can be an interdisciplinary field. There are four main learning categories for language education: ...
when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by
linguists
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
. These formal systems, which often make use of
diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
and non-standard Latin characters and are used in academic settings or for the benefit of non-speakers, contrast with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based
Arabic chat alphabet
The Arabic chat alphabet, ''Arabizi'', Franco-Arabic (), refer to the Romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat ...
.
Different systems and strategies have been developed to address the inherent problems of rendering various Arabic varieties in the Latin script. Examples of such problems are the symbols for Arabic
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
s that do not exist in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
or other
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an languages; the means of representing the
Arabic definite article
( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed def ...
, which is always spelled the same way in written Arabic but has numerous pronunciations in the spoken language depending on context; and the representation of short vowels (usually ''i u'' or ''e o'', accounting for variations such as ''
Muslim
Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
/Moslem'' or ''
Mohammed
Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monoth ...
/Muhammad/Mohamed'').
Method
Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this is not technically correct. ''
Transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
'' is the direct representation of foreign ''letters'' using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually ''
transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
'' systems, which represent the ''sound'' of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, does not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the above rendering ' of the is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be '.
Romanization standards and systems
Principal standards and systems are:
Early Romanization
Early Romanization of the Arabic language was standardized in the various
bilingual Arabic-European dictionaries of the 17–19th centuries:
*
Pedro de Alcalá
Pedro de Alcalá (born circa 1455) was a Hieronymites, Hieronymite lexicographer. After the War of Granada, conquest of Granada by Castile, he collaborated with fellow member of the Order of Saint Jerome Fray Hernando de Talavera in the latter's ef ...
, ''Vocabulista'', 1505. A Spanish-Arabic glossary in transcription only.
[ Edward Lipiński, 2012]
Arabic Linguistics: A Historiographic Overview
pages 32–33
*
Valentin Schindler
Valentin Schindler (14 February 1543 – 11 June 1604) was a Lutheran Hebraist and professor of the University of Wittenberg, where he was an important teacher of the Hebrew language. He moved by 1594 to Helmstedt.
He is known for his dictionary " ...
, ''Lexicon Pentaglotton: Hebraicum, Chaldicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum, et Arabicum'', 1612. Arabic lemmas were printed in Hebrew characters.
[
* ]Franciscus Raphelengius
Frans van Ravelingen Latinized Franciscus Raphelengius (February 27, 1539 – July 20, 1597), was a Flemish-born scholar, printer and publisher, working in Antwerp and later in Leiden. During the last decade of his life he was professor of Heb ...
''Lexicon Arabicum''
Leiden 1613. The first printed dictionary of the Arabic language in Arabic characters.[
* ]Jacobus Golius
Jacob Golius born Jacob van Gool (1596 – September 28, 1667) was an Orientalist and mathematician based at the University of Leiden in Netherlands. He is primarily remembered as an Orientalist. He published Arabic texts in Arabic at Leiden, ...
, ''Lexicon Arabico-Latinum'', Leiden 1653. The dominant Arabic dictionary in Europe for almost two centuries.[
* ]Georg Freytag
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Freytag (19 September 1788 – 16 November 1861) was a German philologist.
Background
Freytag was born in Lüneburg. He studied philology and theology at the University of Göttingen, where from 1811 to 1813 he worke ...
, ''Lexicon Arabico-Latinum'', praesertim ex Djeuharii Firuzubadiique et aliorum libris confectum I–IV, Halle 1830–1837[
* ]Edward William Lane
Edward William Lane (17 September 1801 – 10 August 1876) was a British orientalist, translator and lexicographer. He is known for his ''Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians'' and the '' Arabic-English Lexicon,'' as well as his translati ...
, ''Arabic–English Lexicon
__NOTOC__
The ''Arabic–English Lexicon'' is an Arabic–English dictionary compiled by Edward William Lane (died 1876). It was published in eight volumes during the second half of the 19th century. It consists of Arabic words defined and explai ...
'', 8 vols, London-Edinburgh 1863–1893. Highly influential, but incomplete (stops at Kaf)[
]
Mixed digraphic and diacritical
* BGN/PCGN romanization (1956).
* UNGEGN
The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) is one of the nine expert groups of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and deals with the national and international standardization of geographical names. Ev ...
(1972). United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, or "Variant A of the Amended Beirut System". Adopted from BGN/PCGN.
** IGN
''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa distri ...
System 1973 or "Variant B of the Amended Beirut System", that conforms to the French orthography and is preferred to the Variant A in French-speaking countries as in Maghreb and Lebanon.
** romanization (2007) is different from UNGEGN in two ways: (1) ظ is d͟h instead of z̧; (2) the cedilla is replaced by a sub-macron (_) in all the characters with the cedilla.[
* ]ALA-LC
ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
(first published 1991), from the American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...
and the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
. This romanization is close to the romanization of the and Hans Wehr
Hans Bodo Gerhardt Wehr (; 5 July 1909, Leipzig24 May 1981, Münster) was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957–1974, he published the ''Arabisches Wörterbuch'' (1952), which was later published in an Engl ...
, which is used internationally in scientific publications by Arabist
An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture (usually including Arabic literature).
Origins
Arabists began in medieval Muslim Spain, which lay on the ...
s.
** IJMES, used by ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'', very similar to ALA-LC.
** EI, ''Encyclopaedia of Islam
The ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' (''EI'') is an encyclopaedia of the academic discipline of Islamic studies published by Brill. It is considered to be the standard reference work in the field of Islamic studies. The first edition was published in ...
'' (1st ed., 1913–1938; 2nd ed., 1960–2005).
Fully diacritical
* DMG (', 1935), adopted by the International Convention of Orientalist Scholars in Rome.
** DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...
(1982), developed by the German Institute for Standardization (').
** Hans Wehr transliteration
The Hans Wehr transliteration system is a system for transliteration of the Arabic alphabet into the Latin alphabet used in the Hans Wehr dictionary (1952; in English 1961). The system was modified somewhat in the English editions. It is printe ...
(1961, 1994), a modification to DIN 31635.
** EALL, ''Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics'' (edited by Kees Versteegh, Brill, 2006–2009).
** Spanish romanization, identical to DMG/DIN with the exception of three letters: ǧ > ŷ, ḫ > j, ġ > g.
* ISO 233
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993.
1984 edition
The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.
ISO 233-2:1993
ISO 233-2: ...
(1984), letter-to-letter; vowels are transliterated only if they are shown with diacritics, otherwise they are omitted.
** ISO 233-2 (1993), simplified transliteration; vowels are always shown.
* BS 4280
BS, B.S., Bs or bs may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*BS-, a prefix for all games broadcast for the Satellaview modem via the Japanese Broadcasting Satellite system
* "B.S." (song), a song by Jhené Aiko from the album ''Chilombo''
* Team BS ...
(1968), developed by the British Standards Institution
The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the national standards body of the United Kingdom. BSI produces technical standards on a wide range of products and services and also supplies certification and standards-related services to business ...
.
ASCII-based
* ArabTeX
ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pash ...
(since 1992) has been modelled closely after the transliteration standards ISO/R 233 and DIN 31635.
* Buckwalter Transliteration (1990s), developed at ALPNET by Tim Buckwalter; does not require diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s.
* Arabic chat alphabet: an ad hoc solution for conveniently entering Arabic using a Latin keyboard.
Comparison table
* Hans Wehr transliteration does not capitalize the first letter at the beginning of sentences nor in proper names.
* The ''chat'' table is only a demonstration and is based on the spoken varieties which vary considerably from Literary Arabic on which the IPA table and the rest of the transliterations are based.
* Review ''hamzah
Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the orthography, standard writing system. It is de ...
'' for its various forms.
* Neither standard defines which code point
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
to use for ' and '' ''. Appropriate Unicode points would be modifier letter apostrophe
The modifier letter apostrophe is a letter in Unicode encoding, used primarily for various glottal sounds.
Encoding
The letter apostrophe is encoded at , which is in the ''Spacing Modifier Letters'' Unicode block.
In Unicode code charts it loo ...
〈ʼ〉 and modifier letter turned comma 〈ʻ〉 (for the UNGEGN and BGN/PCGN) or modifier letter reversed comma
In the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, the rough breathing ( grc, δασὺ πνεῦμα, dasỳ pneûma or ''daseîa''; la, spīritus asper) character is a diacritical mark used to indicate the presence of an sound before a vowel, ...
〈ʽ〉 (for the Wehr and Survey of Egypt System (SES)), all of which Unicode defines as letters. Often right and left single quotation mark
Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...
s 〈’〉, 〈‘〉 are used instead, but Unicode defines those as punctuation marks, and they can cause compatibility issues. The glottal stop (') in these romanizations isn't written word-initially.
* In ''Encyclopaedia of Islam'' digraphs are underlined, that is t͟h, d͟j, k͟h, d͟h, s͟h, g͟h. In BGN/PCGN on the contrary the sequences may be romanized with middle dot
An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...
as ''t·h'', ''k·h'', ''d·h'', ''s·h'' respectively.
* In the original German edition of his dictionary (1952) Wehr used ǧ, ḫ, ġ for j, ḵ, ḡ respectively (that is all the letters used are equal to DMG/DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...
). The variant presented in the table is from the English translation of the dictionary (1961).
* BGN/PCGN allows use of underdot
When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the ''interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ )
which may be combined with some letters of th ...
s instead of cedilla
A cedilla ( ; from Spanish) or cedille (from French , ) is a hook or tail ( ¸ ) added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation. In Catalan, French, and Portuguese (called cedilha) it is used only under the ' ...
.
* ' and ' are traditionally written in Northwestern Africa
The Maghreb (; ar, الْمَغْرِب, al-Maghrib, lit=the west), also known as the Arab Maghreb ( ar, المغرب العربي) and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, ...
as and , respectively, while the latter's dot is only added initially or medially.
* In Egypt, Sudan, and sometimes in other regions, the standard form for final-'' '' is only (without dots) in handwriting and print, for both final and final . for the latter pronunciation, is called ' , 'flexible alif'.
* The sun and moon letters
In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters ( ar, حروف شمسية ', mt, konsonanti xemxin) and moon letters or lunar letters (Arabic: ', mt, konsonanti qamrin), based on wh ...
and hamzat waṣl pronunciation rules apply, although it is acceptable to ignore them. The UN system and ALA-LC prefer lowercase ''a'' and hyphens: ''al-Baṣrah, ar-Riyāḍ''; BGN/PCGN prefers uppercase ''A'' and no hyphens: ''Al Baṣrah, Ar Riyāḍ''.
* The EALL suggests ẓ "in proper names" (volume 4, page 517).
* ''BGN/PCGN'', ''UNGEGN'', ''ALA-LC'', and ''DIN 31635'' use a normal for {{angbr, {{lang, ar, ج when romanizing Egyptian names or toponyms that are expectedly pronounced with {{IPAslink, ɡ.
* {{note, 13, 13 ''BGN/PCGN'', ''UNGEGN'', ''ALA-LC'', and ''DIN 31635'' use the French-based {{angbr, ou for {{IPAslink, u, u(:) in Francophone Arabic speaking countries in names and toponyms.
* {{note, 14, 14 Nunation
Nunation ( ar, تَنوِين, ' ), in some Semitic languages such as Literary Arabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics (''ḥarakāt'') to a noun or adjective.
This is used to indicate the word ends in an alveolar nasal without ...
is ignored in all romanizations in names and toponyms.
Romanization issues
Any romanization
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
system has to make a number of decisions which are dependent on its intended field of application.
Vowels
One basic problem is that written Arabic is normally unvocalized; i.e., many of the vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
s are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. Hence unvocalized Arabic writing does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. As a result, a pure transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
, e.g., rendering {{Lang, ar, قطر as {{Transl, ar, qṭr, is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason, transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
s are generally used that add vowels, e.g. {{Transl, ar, ALA, qaṭar. However, unvocalized systems match exactly to written Arabic, unlike vocalized systems such as Arabic chat, which some claim detracts from one's ability to spell.
Transliteration vs. transcription
Most uses of romanization call for transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
rather than transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
: Instead of transliterating each written letter, they try to reproduce the sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language: ''Qaṭar''. This applies equally to scientific and popular applications. A pure transliteration would need to omit vowels (e.g. ''qṭr''), making the result difficult to interpret except for a subset of trained readers fluent in Arabic. Even if vowels are added, a transliteration system would still need to distinguish between multiple ways of spelling the same sound in the Arabic script, e.g. ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif'' {{Lang, ar, 2=ا vs. ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif maqṣūrah'' {{Lang, ar, ى for the sound {{IPA, /aː/ ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ā'', and the six different ways ({{Lang, ar, ء إ أ آ ؤ ئ) of writing the glottal stop
The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
(hamza
Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from ...
, usually transcribed ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ʼ ''). This sort of detail is needlessly confusing, except in a very few situations (e.g., typesetting text in the Arabic script).
Most issues related to the romanization of Arabic are about transliterating vs. transcribing; others, about what should be romanized:
* Some transliterations ignore assimilation of the definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
''al-
( ar, ٱلْـ), also Romanized as ''el-'', ''il-,'' and ''l-'' as pronounced in some varieties of Arabic, is the definite article in the Arabic language: a particle (''ḥarf'') whose function is to render the noun on which it is prefixed def ...
'' before the "sun letters
In Arabic and Maltese, the consonants are divided into two groups, called the sun letters or solar letters ( ar, حروف شمسية ', mt, konsonanti xemxin) and moon letters or lunar letters (Arabic: ', mt, konsonanti qamrin), based on wh ...
", and may be easily misread by non-Arabic speakers. For instance, "the light" {{Lang, ar, النور ''an-nūr'' would be more literally transliterated along the lines of ''alnūr''. In the transcription ''an-nūr'', a hyphen is added and the unpronounced {{IPAslink, l removed for the convenience of the uninformed non-Arabic speaker, who would otherwise pronounce an {{IPA, /l/, perhaps not understanding that {{IPA, /n/ in ''nūr'' is geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from ''gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct from s ...
. Alternatively, if the shaddah
Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , " ign ofemphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a geminated consonant. It is functionally equivalent t ...
is not transliterated (since it is strictly not a letter), a strictly literal transliteration would be ''alnūr'', which presents similar problems for the uninformed non-Arabic speaker.
* A transliteration should render the "closed tāʼ" (''tāʼ marbūṭah
Taw, tav, or taf is the twenty-second and last letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Tāw , Hebrew Tav , Aramaic Taw , Syriac Taw ܬ, and Arabic ت Tāʼ (22nd in abjadi order, 3rd in modern order). In Arabic, it is also gives ri ...
'', {{Lang, ar, ة) faithfully. Many transcriptions render the sound {{IPA, /a/ as ''a'' or ''ah'' and ''t'' when it denotes {{IPA, /at/.
**ISO 233
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993.
1984 edition
The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.
ISO 233-2:1993
ISO 233-2: ...
has a unique symbol, ẗ.
* "Restricted alif" (''{{Transl, ar, ALA, alif maqṣūrah'', {{Lang, ar, ى) should be transliterated with an acute accent
The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...
, ''á'', differentiating it from regular alif {{Lang, ar, ا, but it is transcribed in many schemes like alif, ''ā'', because it stands for {{IPA, /aː/.
* Nunation
Nunation ( ar, تَنوِين, ' ), in some Semitic languages such as Literary Arabic, is the addition of one of three vowel diacritics (''ḥarakāt'') to a noun or adjective.
This is used to indicate the word ends in an alveolar nasal without ...
: what is true elsewhere is also true for nunation: transliteration renders what is seen, transcription what is heard, when in the Arabic script, it is written with diacritics, not by letters, or omitted.
A transcription may reflect the language as spoken, typically rendering names, for example, by the people of Baghdad (Baghdad Arabic
Baghdadi Arabic is the Arabic dialect spoken in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. During the last century, Baghdadi Arabic has become the lingua franca of Iraq, and the language of commerce and education. It is considered a subset of Iraqi Arabic.
P ...
), or the official standard ( Literary Arabic) as spoken by a preacher
A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as a ...
in the mosque or a TV newsreader. A transcription is free to add phonological (such as vowels) or morphological (such as word boundaries) information. Transcriptions will also vary depending on the writing conventions of the target language; compare English ''Omar Khayyam
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam ( fa, عمر خیّام), was a polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, an ...
'' with German ''Omar Chajjam'', both for {{Lang, ar, عمر خيام {{IPA, /ʕumar xajjaːm/, {{IPA-ar, ˈʕomɑr xæjˈjæːm} (unvocalized ''{{Transl, ar, ʿmr ḫyām'', vocalized ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, ʻUmar Khayyām'').
A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine should be able to transliterate it back into Arabic. A transliteration can be considered as flawed for any one of the following reasons:
*A "loose" transliteration is ambiguous, rendering several Arabic phonemes with an identical transliteration, or such that digraphs for a single phoneme (such as ''dh gh kh sh th'' rather than ''ḏ ġ ḫ š ṯ'') may be confused with two adjacent consonants—but this problem is resolved in the ALA-LC
ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
romanization system, where the prime symbol
The prime symbol , double prime symbol , triple prime symbol , and quadruple prime symbol are used to designate units and for other purposes in mathematics, science, linguistics and music.
Although the characters differ little in appearance fr ...
ʹ is used to separate two consonants when they do not form a digraph; for example: {{Lang, ar, أَكْرَمَتْها ''{{Transl, ar, ALA, akramatʹhā'' ('she honored her'), in which the ''t'' and ''h'' are two distinct consonantal sounds.
*Symbols representing phonemes may be considered too similar (e.g., ʻ and ' or ʿ and ʾ for {{Lang, ar, ع ʻayn
''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only).
The letter represents a ...
and hamzah
Hamza ( ar, همزة ') () is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop . Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the orthography, standard writing system. It is de ...
);
*ASCII transliterations using capital letters to disambiguate phonemes are easy to type, but may be considered unaesthetic.
A fully accurate transcription may not be necessary for native Arabic speakers, as they would be able to pronounce names and sentences correctly anyway, but it can be very useful for those not fully familiar with spoken Arabic and who are familiar with the Roman alphabet. An accurate transliteration serves as a valuable stepping stone for learning, pronouncing correctly, and distinguishing phonemes. It is a useful tool for anyone who is familiar with the sounds of Arabic but not fully conversant in the language.
One criticism is that a fully accurate system would require special learning that most do not have to actually pronounce names correctly, and that with a lack of a universal romanization system they will not be pronounced correctly by non-native speakers anyway. The precision will be lost if special characters are not replicated and if a reader is not familiar with Arabic pronunciation.
Examples
Examples in Literary Arabic:
{, class="wikitable"
, -
! Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
, style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, أمجد كان له قصر , , style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, إلى المملكة المغربية
, -
! Arabic with diacritics
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
(normally omitted)
, style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, أَمْجَدُ كَانَ لَهُ قَصْر , , style="font-size:larger", {{Lang, ar, إِلَى الْمَمْلَكَةِ الْمَغْرِبِيَّة
, -
! IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
, {{IPA, /ʔamdʒadu kaːna lahuː qasˤr/ , , {{IPA, /ʔila‿l.mamlakati‿l.maɣribij.jah/
, -
! ALA-LC
ALA-LC (American Library AssociationLibrary of Congress) is a set of standards for romanization, the representation of text in other writing systems using the Latin script.
Applications
The system is used to represent bibliographic information by ...
, {{Transl, ar, ALA, Amjad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, ALA, Ilá al-mamlakah al-Maghribīyah
, -
! Hans Wehr
Hans Bodo Gerhardt Wehr (; 5 July 1909, Leipzig24 May 1981, Münster) was a German Arabist. A professor at the University of Münster from 1957–1974, he published the ''Arabisches Wörterbuch'' (1952), which was later published in an Engl ...
, {{Transl, ar, Wehr, amjad kāna lahū qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, Wehr, ilā l-mamlaka al-maḡribīya
, -
! DIN 31635 DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN) standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG) as modified by the International Orientalist ...
, {{Transl, ar, DIN, ʾAmǧad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, DIN, ʾIlā l-mamlakah al-Maġribiyyah
, -
! UNGEGN
The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) is one of the nine expert groups of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and deals with the national and international standardization of geographical names. Ev ...
, {{Transl, ar, UNGEGN, Amjad kāna lahu qaşr , , {{Transl, ar, UNGEGN, Ilá al-mamlakah al-maghribiyyah
, -
! ISO 233
The international standard ISO 233 establishes a system for romanization of Arabic and Syriac. It was supplemented by ISO 233-2 in 1993.
1984 edition
The table below shows the consonants for the Arabic language.
ISO 233-2:1993
ISO 233-2: ...
, {{Transl, ar, ISO, ʾˈamǧad kāna lahu qaṣr , , {{Transl, ar, ISO, ʾˈilaỳ ʾˈalmamlakaẗ ʾˈalmaġribiȳaẗ
, -
! ArabTeX
ArabTeX is a free software package providing support for the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets to TeX and LaTeX. Written by Klaus Lagally, it can take romanized ASCII or native script input to produce quality ligatures for Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pash ...
, am^gad kAna lahu qa.sr , , il_A almamlakaT alma.gribiyyaT
, -
! English
, Amjad had a palace , , To the Moroccan Kingdom
Arabic alphabet and nationalism
There have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by number of countries using it or a script directly derived from it, and the ...
into Latin script or to romanize the language.
Lebanon
A Beirut newspaper, ''La Syrie'', pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
in 1922. The major head of this movement was Louis Massignon
Louis Massignon (25 July 1883 – 31 October 1962) was a Catholic scholar of Islam and a pioneer of Catholic-Muslim mutual understanding. He was an influential figure in the twentieth century with regard to the Catholic church's relationship w ...
, a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928. Massignon's attempt at romanization failed as the Academy and the population viewed the proposal as an attempt from the Western world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, a member of the Academy, asserted that the movement to romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominate Lebanon.[{{Cite book, last=Shrivtiel, first=Shraybom, title=The Question of Romanisation of the Script and The Emergence of Nationalism in the Middle East, date=1998, publisher=Mediterranean Language Review, pages=179–196][History of Arabic Writing]
Egypt
After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for a way to reclaim and reemphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of the Arabic language
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic
The variety (linguistics), varieties (or dialects or vernacular languages) of Arabic, a Semitic languages, Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic family originating in the Arabian Peninsula, are the linguistic systems tha ...
would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used. There was also the idea of finding a way to use hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
instead of the Latin alphabet. A scholar, Salama Musa, agreed with the idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Egyptian Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology. This change in script, he believed, would solve the problems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of written vowels and difficulties writing foreign words.[Shrivtiel, p. 188] Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi, two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported the push for romanization. The idea that romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo. He believed and desired to implement romanization in a way that allowed words and spellings to remain somewhat familiar to the Egyptian people. However, this effort failed as the Egyptian people felt a strong cultural tie to the Arabic alphabet, particularly the older generation.
See also
*Arabic chat alphabet
The Arabic chat alphabet, ''Arabizi'', Franco-Arabic (), refer to the Romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat ...
*Arabic diacritics
The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , ').
The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...
*Arabic grammar
Arabic grammar or Arabic language sciences ( ar, النحو العربي ' or ar, عُلُوم اللغَة العَرَبِيَّة ') is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with ...
*Arabic names
Arabic language names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from the Arabic-speaking and also Muslim countries have not had given/ middle/ family names but rather a chain of names. This system remains in use throughou ...
*Glottal stop (letter)
The character , called glottal stop, is an alphabetic letter in some Latin alphabets, most notably in several languages of Canada where it indicates a glottal stop sound. Such usage derives from phonetic transcription, for example the Inter ...
*Maltese alphabet
The Maltese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet with the addition of some letters with diacritic marks and digraphs. It is used to write the Maltese language, which evolved from the otherwise extinct Siculo-Arabic dialect, as a result of 800 ...
*Ottoman Turkish alphabet
The Ottoman Turkish alphabet ( ota, الفبا, ') is a version of the Arabic script used to write Ottoman Turkish until 1928, when it was replaced by the Latin-based modern Turkish alphabet.
Though Ottoman Turkish was primarily written in thi ...
– a Perso-Arabic
The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran ( Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th cent ...
-based alphabet, which was replaced by the Latin-based Turkish alphabet
The Turkish alphabet ( tr, ) is a Latin-script alphabet used for writing the Turkish language, consisting of 29 letters, seven of which (Ç, Ğ, Dotless I, I, İ, Ö, Ş and Ü) have been modified from their Latin originals for the phonetic requ ...
in 1928
*Romanization of Hebrew
The Hebrew language uses the Hebrew alphabet with optional vowel diacritics. The romanization of Hebrew is the use of the Latin alphabet to transliterate Hebrew words.
For example, the Hebrew name spelled ("Israel") in the Hebrew alphabet ca ...
*Romanization of Persian
Romanization of Persian or Latinization of Persian ( fa, لاتیننویسی فارسی, Lâtin-Nevisi-ye Fârsi, link=no, ) is the representation of the Persian language (Iranian Persian, Dari and Tajik) with the Latin script. Several diffe ...
* Standard Arabic Technical Transliteration System (SATTS)
References
{{Reflist
External links
Comparative table of DIN 31635, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, ALA-LC, and Encyclopædia of Islam
(not normative)
{{Arabic language
{{Romanization
{{DEFAULTSORT:Romanization Of Arabic
Arabic orthography